Gates: PC Part Of Ecosystem of Digital Devices

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SEATTLEMicrosoft chairman Bill Gates proclaimed that the PC will have an important but reduced role in the collection of tomorrow’s digital devices.

Gates, whose speech was tipped to some news outlets, indicated that the PC’s next targets would be as a digital repository of multimedia content and tighter integration with both wired and wireless phones.

“In the next ten yearswhich we call the digital decadethe PC will be used for a wide variety of things that it hasn’t been used for in the past,” Gates said.

Gates’ speech at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference here charted the pace of innovation of such familiar metrics as CPU speeds and hard-disk size, but also more obscure indicators like network latency, which has remained roughly static at about 2 milliseconds, Gates said. Since it’s difficult to overcome network latency and impossible to overcome the speed of light, Gates said new techniques like more intelligent caching of data close to users will be necessary.

“If there’s any capability that’s not going, it’s broadband capability, but over the next few years I expect that to be addressed,” Gates said.

Gates speech took place on the last day of WinHEC, relatively unusual in an era where CEO’s generally open shows with visionary speeches. As such, Gates was left to sum up initiatives Microsoft officials have talked about over the last few days, such as the next-generation Microsoft “Corona” iteration of the Windows Media Player. Executives demonstrated fitting 365 songs onto a standard CD-RW disk (the bit rates and quality were undisclosed) using the new Corona codec.

Microsoft’s only announcement was to push Bluetooth, the wireless “personal area network” standard that Gates said was similar to a wireless version of USB. Microsoft will include Bluetooth support in the next version of Windows XP this fall as well as release a driver development kit. Microsoft’s hardware division will also release its own Bluetooth adapters for products like keyboards and mice.

Microsoft officials showcased a demonstration in which a Bluetooth-equipped PC used Outlook to look up a cell phone number, dial the call using a cell phone, while logging the call and offering the user the ability to record it for archival purposes.

Intel president Paul Otellini followed Gates with a more prosaic speech about Intel’s role in supplying the building blocks to make Microsoft’s vision possible. He reminded the audience that the company is the market leader in Ethernet components as well as microprocessors.

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